The Simplest Thing
by lukadarkwater
Summary: Lalna had always had trouble sleeping, that is until Nano moved in with him - Fluff


Lalna had always had trouble sleeping.

Ever since he was little, he would be always be up till all hours of the night reading, or thinking, or playing with bits of machine parts that he found. His brain was simply too loud to allow him to rest for more than a few hours and thus he had very quickly fallen into a cycle of falling asleep whenever he felt like it and waking up whenever he did and continuing on whatever project he had been working on before he had taken his nap.

When he was living alone, this sleep cycle had worked perfectly. No one was around enough to catch his strange habit and so no one called him out on it or tried to correct it so he saw no reason to try and change it.

He had been perfectly content to keep on living in the same way he always had when Nano moved in but he quickly learned that she did not approve of his erratic sleeping schedule.

The first time she had walked in on him asleep against one of the machines she had woken him up in a panic because she thought that he had passed out.

Dazed from being awoken so roughly, he had panicked slightly himself because he thought something was wrong with the machines.

Once both of them had calmed down, and Lalna had frantically checked everything over to make sure nothing had broken during his nap, she had demanded an explanation for why he had just fallen asleep on the floor.

He, having never explained his strange sleeping cycle to anyone before, simply shrugged and said he had gotten tired.

Nano had not been easily accepting of this explanation, however, and, when she kept finding him asleep at random times, she began to enforce a strict curfew on the scientist.

She would wake him up whenever she found him asleep during the day and force him into his bed when the sun set disregarding any protests from him along the way.

"It isn't healthy Lalna!" she exclaimed whenever he complained about it, "First of it, it's hard on your body to just sleep on the floor or lean up against the wall and secondly you can just fall asleep whenever you feel like it!

Needless to say, it hadn't exactly worked well at first. Due to not being able to sleep whenever he wanted, he became quite grumpy. His mind wasn't as sharp as it normally was and, even though he was tired, he couldn't sleep through the night. He would often wake up in the early morning hours and sneak off to the lab only to have Nano come down and drag him back to his bed soon after.

When they had moved into Panda Labs, and their beds were in the same room, Lalna was surprised to find that he was actually able to sleep much better.

He was startled to find himself actually going to bed without Nano forcing him to and falling asleep quickly and with much more ease than he was used to.

When he did wake, he would lie in bed and listen to the steady breathing of Nano in the bed close to him. It was very calming, he found, just that small noise filling the silent air around him and he grew used to falling back asleep to it.

After the war with Hat Films, when Lalna set up their beds in the new base, Nano had protested loudly against them sleeping in the same bed but there was no other place in the same room for the other bed to go and so he protested against moving it, afraid to lose the one thing that helped him fall asleep at night.

After much grumbling, Nano had allowed it but she slept on the very edge of the bed, and insisted that they not share covers.

Lalna hadn't minded though, she was still next to him and that was all he needed.

Time passed and the complex grew and soon enough they built a proper house and Lalna built them two separate beds just to keep her happy.

However, one night as he was coming back in from locking up the lab, he was surprised to find Nano asleep in his hammock.

He knew she had been sleeping poorly in the big canopy bed as her breathing hadn't been as deep or consistent as it had been in Panda Labs but he didn't know it had been so bad that she had decided to move beds.

He stood in the doorway considering what to do. He regarded the big canopy bed and realized something. From the way it was tucked up against the wall around the corner from his hammock, a person laying normally in it wouldn't be able to see the hammock.

He looked back to where Nano was sleeping in his bed and wondered if perhaps…

He shook his head dismissing the idea but it still didn't solve his current dilemma.

At that moment, Nano shifted and uttered a single word.

"Lalna."

His blue eyes were locked on her face, sure that she was awake but she just sighed and grabbed the covers, hugging them to her chest.

He approached her sleeping form silently, careful not to wake her.

She was so small, curling in on herself as she was in the hammock. She hardly took up any room at all and her face was so much more open when was sleep, making her look younger than she truly was.

Her hair was a mess of a halo around her head and Lalna lifted his hand and softly moved a stray hair from her cheek, his hand lingering for a moment on her warm skin before tucking it behind her ear.

"Lalna"

Her whisper made his freeze as she stretched out a hand and weakly groped in his direction.

"Lalna… come to bed… idiot."

Lalna smiled and carefully picked up her sleeping form, cradling her against his chest, before getting into the hammock and laying her down besides him.

Once he was settled, he reached out and pulled her back against his chest so that he was curved around her.

She was so warm against him. He wrapped her arm about her waist and pulled her closer until he could smell the sweet smell of her hair that he had caught whiffs of before on the rare occasions when they hugged.

He could feel her back moving in time with her slow breathing and it was so calming that he started to drift off to sleep.

Just before he gave himself to unconsciousness, he heard a small voice say "Goodnight Lalna" and smiled before nuzzling his nose deeper into her hair.


End file.
